we are all cinders from a fire burning long ago
by whatsherwhat
Summary: In which it rains for the first time in thousands of days, Dag and Cheedo fight, Toast is Knowing, and Dag prays. Cheedo/Dag.


Author's Notes: This was my gift for schwarmerei1 in the Mad Max Secret Santa Exchange! Hope you all enjoy.

* * *

The ground was wet.

Wait. The ground was...wet?

Crouching down, she cocked her head to the side and touched the ground with her index finger to make sure she wasn't hallucinating. Her finger came away damp.

That was strange. She could count on one hand the number of times that the ground had been wet with something other than blood.

The "What is it?" was matter-of-fact, as always.

Cheedo sprung up from the ground and stood, arms loosely wrapped around herself, gazing at the grey skies contemplatively. "I think—"

Stretching out her arms, she held her hands palms up, as if to catch the fat droplets before they fell to their sizzling demises, and tentatively stepped out from under the cover of the rocky cliff. The corner of her lips quirked up. "Dag, I think it's raining."

Dag scoffed. "Rain? It doesn't rain here."

"You've gotten cranky staying inside the Citadel these few weeks. Come out! It smells so..." Wet. Bright. Like the green plants they have in the caverns but better. It was a smell she hadn't gotten a whiff of for many, many days. It was a good smell. "It smells earthy."

"I'd rather not. It's—it's uncanny." Dag patted the orange rock of the cliff wryly. "At least I know this won't hurt. Who knows what that," she slashed her spindly fingers around in the air pointedly, "uncanniness will do to me?" And so quiet that Cheedo almost didn't hear: "Never mind what might happen to the sprog."

Even Dag's miserly attitude wasn't enough to dampen Cheedo's growing delight. Rain! She twirled around, her laugh ringing as she let herself be pelted with rain. Soon enough, she was soaked to the bone and grinning with it.

* * *

"Are you sure you want to keep it?"

" _Him._ Yes, I want him."

"I'm just making sure." Cheedo paused her work of digging her shallow trenches or whatever they were called—Dag was the growing expert, not her—and wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her right hand. She admired the way her fingertips were smeared with dirt and her palms were calloused after days of gardening, felt something warm bloom in her chest at the thought that perhaps all those blisters were worth it. That feeling faded when she got no answer, no response, no whisper of _anything_ from Dag. Dag, who never held back anything! Not from her. Cheedo sighed. "I don't want you to regret it. The birth. Having him or her grow up in here."

"Eh, Warlord Junior ain't going to come out yet." Casual, but marked by a slight edge of curtness.

"Stop calling him that!" It hadn't escaped her notice that Dag's words were a deflection. Considering how Dag had been evading for the past seventeen days every time she'd even broached the topic of what they were going to do with the baby, she was trying to lull her into a sense of security. That is, if she could make the most of those strategy discussions she had been having with Furiosa and actually pulled off a more subtle talking approach.

Cheedo stole a glance at Dag's working space from the corner of her eye. Dag sat frozen with her knife in the air, then continued cutting away the older leaves they would probably using for food later, as if nothing had happened. "You're calling him _Joe_ , all nice and friendly. What's wrong with 'Warlord Junior'?"

Just kidding. Apparently she was finally talking, just not in any productive way.

She was not one for confrontations, but damn it, talking to Dag was like pulling teeth. Not that she would know, having a full set herself. But she could imagine. Now she bared her own teeth, yanking Dag's arm until they were glaring eye-to-eye. "You're afraid of a little rain but not having a baby?"

A long pause. Then, Dag realized, "You don't want me to have this baby." Her words were flat. "You don't want him."

"Maybe I don't want reminders of Joe running freely around the Citadel," she said softly. She bit back the next part, the part where she didn't want to admit that she was afraid of watching Dag's grow into his namesake. That would be truly be terrifying. Wasn't it up to them to do something now, when they could? None of these words made it past the cage of her teeth. They couldn't, not if she didn't want to hurt Dag anymore.

Dag spat. "That's a bit late, isn't it."

She eased back into a standing position and strode out, arm curled protectively around her belly.

As much as she had hurt Dag's feelings, those words stung, too. Cheedo took the packet of seeds that Dag had left behind, pinching them out to bury them in her mini-trenches. If she used more force than necessary to pat the soil back into place, there was no one around to notice and tell Dag she'd been mistreating what basically amounted to the late Keeper's heirlooms.

"If looks could kill, I bet those seeds would be burning in their beds right not. Lucky for you that we've got access to a ton of water."

She startled, seeds spilling out heedlessly when Toast suddenly materialized from the darker shadows of the cavern, stepping surely one, two, three, four into her row. Toast was good at that. Lurking in corners. Surprising Cheedo. Offering her words when they were needed.

"We're here again. We never thought we'd be back. Still calling it the 'Citadel.'" Toast said. She ran her hands through the lush green leaves in the row to their right. "And we all decided, everyone stays, for good or for worse."

"And what if worse happens? What if _we_ do worse?" She didn't ask how long Toast had been standing there. Just handed her the packet of seeds and moved the spilled seeds into their own trenches.

"We'll work through it." As steadily as if she knew it was in there all along, Toast plucked out a seed that was black and moldy, rolling it between her fingers thoughtfully. "You never know how a seed will turn out. Ace. Angharad. Nux."

After a minute of holding eye contact, Cheedo looked away, hating that she had to blink away a few tears. She said to the far wall, "I'll remember."

When she looked up again, Toast was gone, and her fingers were closed around a blackened seed.

* * *

Cheedo knocked twice on the rock and stood uncertainly in the makeshift doorway. Cavern entrance. Whatever.

"Get out. Leave me to my evening ablutions."

She winced. Ah, Dag hadn't forgiven her yet. Forgiveness didn't come easily to her—to any of them—which was fair, given that they hadn't had very many chances to fight with each other. But she had to mend things between them; Dag was still hers and she was still Dag's even when they weren't quite fitting together at this moment.

Taking a chance that Dag wouldn't bite her head off, she edged closer. "I thought that you only had morning ablutions."

"When the sprog is bouncing around all the time, this stuff doesn't exactly stay in one part of the day. Couldn't keep dinner down, hair got in the way, so."

"Oh." At least she didn't blame Cheedo for not being there. Or maybe the not verbalizing the blaming was worse. She gestured at Dag's hair vaguely, "Do you want me to...?"

She was met with a glare.

Dag pointed at the other end of the bed, "You can sit, but only because there's nowhere else to sit. Stay over there."

After a few minutes of struggling to brush her hair, long as it was, and exhausted as Dag looked, Cheedo rolled her eyes and scooted forward until she sat right behind Dag. She grabbed the comb and slammed it down next to her, out of Dag's sight and out of her reach. Stubborn girl. Always choosing to do the hardest things by herself. But Cheedo could be stubborn, too.

At Dag's indignant "What are you doing? I thought I told you to stay over there!" she said firmly, "I'm taking care of you."

Speaking to the back of Dag's head, Cheedo felt her nerves slipping away. She threaded her fingers through the blond strands and began to gently detangle the knots. "And apologizing."

Pausing the movement of her fingers for a second, she hooked her chin over Dag's shoulder and said, "The things I said, I don't regret them." Feeling Dag stiffen and start to pull away, she hurried to say, "I don't regret them because they're things I'm afraid of and they were bound to come out."

Dag slipped her fingers through Cheedo's and dryly said, "Let me guess. We were going to have this fight at some point."

Cheedo knocked their heads together lightly. "Probably."

"Mmm. Felt it coming days before. Didn't want to fight."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Now give me the rest of my apology." Dag twisted around, surprisingly agile, to have the rest of this conversation face-to-face. At Cheedo's look of surprise, she said simply. "I know you. I know there's more."

Cheedo confessed, "I didn't want to hurt you. But I also did want to? Anything to get a reaction from you. You haven't talked about how you're doing at all, not since we came back to the Citadel with Furiosa and Max." Then she mumbled, feeling smaller than small, "At least, not with me."

It was Dag's turn to knock her forehead gently against Cheedo's. "Looks like we both have problems saying things, eh?" She paused. "I'm talking some with Toast. Talking some _at_ Max; he still doesn't say much. Working up the nerve to talk to you. It's not easy, when you're about to landmine me every time I open my mouth, but I'm trying."

Head still touching Dag's, Cheedo sighed into the dwindling space between their mouths. "Try harder. Both of us?"

"Both of us."

* * *

Cheedo looked around at the garden and all the symbols on the walls painted with—was that _blood_? She squinted at Toast, who smirked around her toothpick and tossed her a half-used bowl from across the cavern. Thank god Cheedo caught it. She'd never live down breaking another bowl with Toast present; she'd surely spread the news to everyone in the Citadel. Sniffing the contents, she caught the scent of some kind of herb paste. She walked over to Dag, hands lightly brushing up against the drying lines on the wall. "What are you doing?"

Dag smacked her hand away. "You'll smear the paste!" At Cheedo's arched brow, she explained, "We're setting up this ritual so I can pray." Although back to her habits of brevity, Dag was thrumming with so much excitement she could barely stand still. She traced Cheedo's steps and repainted the brown lines that Cheedo smudged.

"To who?"

"Anyone who's listening."

"Oh. For what?" The _sprog_ , in Dag's words, wasn't coming for at least another hundred days, though Cheedo supposed it was never too early to start praying for their baby's health.

"For rain. Last time we had rain was...awhile ago." Last time they had rain was when they fought. Dag didn't say, but they were both thinking it. Cheedo didn't believe in superstition, but it would be nice to have a cycle of rain to cleanse everyone and bring a little extra joy to the Citadel.

Dag continued, "We have aquacola, but it's not the same. Toast agreed to helping me set up and—"

Before Toast had a chance to spring up from the wall she was lazily leaning against, Dag hustled over, catching her red-handed, and descended. "Get that toothpick outta your mouth!"

"It's the length of two pebbles. Two very small pebbles." Toast said dryly. "I doubt it'll do much."

"It messes with the prayers." With hands on hips, belly growing fuller and fuller as the days passed, Dag posed a formidable opponent. Well, she tried to. Mostly, Cheedo just thought she looked adorable, if a bit mad sometimes.

Before she could say anything to intervene in this, admittedly, pointless disagreement, Cheedo found herself being tugged quickly to the side. "Furiosa! What—"

"Let her do this." Furiosa's eyes were bright. "She's taking initiative for the first time since we got back. She's on fire."

Cheedo's lips quirked. "She is, isn't she? Our Dag."


End file.
